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Ah Bloody Valentines!

Ahh Valentine’s Day, possibly the most polarizing “holiday” of the calendar year. Much like St. Patrick’s Day, much like Halloween and even a little like Christmas, you can guarantee that social media will be split into two warring camps, much like the Montagues and the Capulets, with each side as vociferous as the other. One side will argue that Valentine’s Day is “cheap, commercialized crap.” Whereas the other side (you can usually tell which side somebody is on by their current marital status) will tell you that it’s a “great day, where couples can reaffirm their devotion and spoil each other, its only a bit of fun…”

Now, I normally am in that first camp, as a cripplingly single man, I found the whole concept of Valentine’s day repulsive. I felt that its a day where, if you happen to commit the cardinal sin of being single, it is rubbed smack bang in your face. I thought it was a day which ostracized those who happened to be lonely. It just sucked for me. I’d never get a Valentines card, never get so much as a ‘happy valentines’. Just hurt to see all these couples brazenly showing how ‘in love’ they were whilst I just sat there, like I was a single spare wheel in a fleet of coaches. It damn hurt.

Not any more however.

Not that I’ve found love this year or anything (still very much single) but it’s just I’ve to some extent ‘grown up’. It isn’t about me, neither is it about any other single bitter moaner. People don’t (usually) make these public romantic gestures just to rub it in the faces of the single and the lonely, they do it because they love their significant other and use the day to spoil them. For some of the happy couples, particularly those who can’t see each other all the time for whatever reason, be it that work keeps them apart or maybe one of them serves in the armed forces. And who am I to put a downer on those folks’ day by telling them that it ‘doesn’t mean anything’ or is ‘commercialized bullsh*t’.

I’m getting a smidge ranty and am probably not making too much sense, essentially what I’m saying is that whilst for me, Valentines day is nothing special, there are those in the world who think it will be the most special day of all. And who am I to deny them that? Perhaps it is no coincidence that the most bitter and venomous of cynics are the perpetual singletons every February 14th…